The thing is that there's a big difference between modifying some ebuilds and becoming a Gentoo developer. It sounds like there's a long and convoluted process that you have to go through to become a dev.

Well what I am doing is gaugeing the community's view of the developer recruitment process.

There are some points that need to be fixed in Gentoo and one of those is the staffing needs. The more people like you an PJP who effectively say "I wouldn't go near it because of the convoluted process to become a developer" the better. Gentoo now knows from the horses mouth what the problems are.

Also, if we get people saying "I am unsure if I can become a full time developer because of home commitments but if could look after $package because I use it quite a lot" then Gentoo knows that it needs to rethink the organisational structure of the developer community.

We already offer the possibility to do proxy maintenance, and this should soon get more exposure once this proposal gets implemented. And you could even become a full developer and only look after one package. It does not need any full-time commitment. We're all volunteers with lives outside of Gentoo._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

Someone has to volunteer to get it going and then there has to be interest to maintain it.

This is a direct result of a small community. Why is it that other power-user distros like Arch are able to attract and maintain a large userbase, while Gentoo isn't?

We don't have a small community. Gentoo is actually one of the larger distros, with an active community. It certainly is bigger than Arch._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

That is patent nonsense. We have one of the largest official repositories of any distro. Only Debian can compare in number of packages provided.

There will always be packages that are not included in the portage tree. We are a volunteer distro, so if nobody is interested in picking up a certain package and maintain it in portage, then it doesn't get done. You are welcome to step up and make sure it does. That's how I got involved and became a Gentoo developer. I wanted to see QtCurve and SMPlayer included, and for some time maintained ebuilds for those packages in my personal overlay, and then I was asked to become a dev.

pjp wrote:

** Sunrise is a nice effort, and overlays may be a nice technical capability, but I really want a single package management system / environment. sync, search, emerge.

There is a single package management system. Portage, layman and eix (for sync and search) are the Holy Trinity that constitute the single divinity of Gentoo package management. Peace be upon you._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

One dev actually responded "Don't ever ask to stabilize one of my packages!"

W.T.F. a package that has been operating fine in ~arch for over 6months and some dev goes all ivory tower on my because I was doing something for the community...

That's pretty pathetic. Hopefully isolated.

Naib wrote:

people stick to their area's and pull the "I volunteer my time".

every month or so a kinda mini-sprint where dev's regardless of their herd help to bump packages

other dev's don't do much because "I work in my herd"

Sounds like you want a sweatshop of volunteer devs. I'm assuming most people have full-time jobs and wouldn't mind "down time" when they're caught up on their "volunteer work" rather than have a mini sprint where they keep working, or work even harder than normal. That kind of approach leads to burn-out.

Naib wrote:

Take a look at php... one dev and php-5.3 has been out for over a year AND NOWHERE NEAR THE TREE!!!

Maybe the issue is why there is only 1 dev on such a prominent package. Why is it nobody else is willing to help with that package?_________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

The thing is that there's a big difference between modifying some ebuilds and becoming a Gentoo developer. It sounds like there's a long and convoluted process that you have to go through to become a dev.

Well what I am doing is gaugeing the community's view of the developer recruitment process.

There are some points that need to be fixed in Gentoo and one of those is the staffing needs. The more people like you an PJP who effectively say "I wouldn't go near it because of the convoluted process to become a developer" the better. Gentoo now knows from the horses mouth what the problems are.

I am aware of that, it is me who responded 2 emails after that. No-one replied to my emails and no-one took up my offer of help.

yngwin wrote:

cokehabit wrote:

Also, if we get people saying "I am unsure if I can become a full time developer because of home commitments but if could look after $package because I use it quite a lot" then Gentoo knows that it needs to rethink the organisational structure of the developer community.

We already offer the possibility to do proxy maintenance, and this should soon get more exposure once this proposal gets implemented. And you could even become a full developer and only look after one package. It does not need any full-time commitment. We're all volunteers with lives outside of Gentoo.

That is great and I know about proxy maintainer but in my experience I am one of the few outside the dev community who does.

This thread was not started so people can argue about things, it is to let Gentoo know who is willing to do what for Gentoo. It seems like - to the vast majority of people - the major hurdle is the dev exam and studying for it. Gentoo either needs to find a way to recruit more people willing to do the exam or change the entrance requirements.

If you made a thread here in OTW and said "Here is a list of packages that need some loving, can you proxy maintain one?" Then people would have no problem helping out. You could even give out special kudos or have a new "Proxy-Maintainer" status in the forums._________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

in my admittedly limited knowledge of the bullshit politics and complete lack of any progress that has happened in the last several years

Your knowledge is limited indeed. There has been a lot of progress in the last years. Not as much as we would like to see, but "complete lack" doesn't come even close to a resemblance of reality.

speeddemon wrote:

People have complained and made posts over and over about how ridiculous it is to become a dev. And the devs always seem to respond with "we did it, we see no problems with the status quo. If you want to help you should suck it up and deal with it".

Some devs maybe. But there are a lot who would like to see the recruitment process streamlined. There have been discussions in the past, and minor improvements have been made. And we are now discussing it again, there is a real interest into improving this situation._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

That is patent nonsense. We have one of the largest official repositories of any distro. Only Debian can compare in number of packages provided.

I provided a specific example and was not attempting any "my repository is bigger than your repository." I apologize for not being more clear.

yngwin wrote:

There will always be packages that are not included in the portage tree. We are a volunteer distro, so if nobody is interested in picking up a certain package and maintain it in portage, then it doesn't get done.

I agree 100%. Over time I have observed that there have actually been very few packages I was interested in which were unavailable.

yngwin wrote:

You are welcome to step up and make sure it does. That's how I got involved and became a Gentoo developer. I wanted to see QtCurve and SMPlayer included, and for some time maintained ebuilds for those packages in my personal overlay, and then I was asked to become a dev.

The ebuild has been available in bugzilla since 2005. Dev comments don't exactly promote a sense that what you say in this specific case would happen.

yngwin wrote:

There is a single package management system. Portage, layman and eix (for sync and search) are the Holy Trinity that constitute the single divinity of Gentoo package management. Peace be upon you.

Last I looked, layman was maintained separately. 'emerge sync' did not bring down a 'layman' tree as it does a portage tree. If that's been fixed, great work by those who implemented it.

Someone has to volunteer to get it going and then there has to be interest to maintain it.

This is a direct result of a small community. Why is it that other power-user distros like Arch are able to attract and maintain a large userbase, while Gentoo isn't?

We don't have a small community. Gentoo is actually one of the larger distros, with an active community. It certainly is bigger than Arch.

What are you basing this on? Do you have any metrics? And how do you explain the contradictory evidence in the form of the more active Arch forums, the faster updates to packages, the more complete wiki, and so on?_________________

That is patent nonsense. Certainly there is room for improvement. But I do see a lot of constructive user-developer interaction going on._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

Someone has to volunteer to get it going and then there has to be interest to maintain it.

This is a direct result of a small community. Why is it that other power-user distros like Arch are able to attract and maintain a large userbase, while Gentoo isn't?

We don't have a small community. Gentoo is actually one of the larger distros, with an active community. It certainly is bigger than Arch.

What are you basing this on? Do you have any metrics? And how do you explain the contradictory evidence in the form of the more active Arch forums, the faster updates to packages, the more complete wiki, and so on?

posts on the forums does not a distribution make. 10 years on the other hand..._________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

It doesn't make the distribution directly, but it does show the size of the dedicated community, which affects things like the quality of the Wiki, promotion of the distro to non-users, etc., which are all just as important the development itself.

cokehabit wrote:

10 years on the other hand...

Arch is 8 years old, so there's not really much of a difference._________________

I am aware of that, it is me who responded 2 emails after that. No-one replied to my emails and no-one took up my offer of help.

Actually, one of our recruiters did answer to that. And yes, your suggestions are very good. And I will certainly recommend those to be considered when we hammer out a revised recruitment process. Things often happen slowly in Gentoo. It is one of the downsides of being such a large distro. Don't be dismayed. Stay in touch with people who want to see the same things happening!

cokehabit wrote:

I know about proxy maintainer but in my experience I am one of the few outside the dev community who does.

Yes, that is unfortunate. PR is one of our weak areas. We should have much better and more easily accessible communication about the various ways people can contribute to Gentoo. I know there are a lot of users who would, if they knew how to, or if barriers were lowered. Let's see what we can do to make that happen now.

cokehabit wrote:

This thread was not started so people can argue about things,

I'm not trying to argue either, but to offer some rays of hope, and to take away some misconceptions, and also to see how we can work together to improve things.

cokehabit wrote:

If you made a thread here in OTW and said "Here is a list of packages that need some loving, can you proxy maintain one?" Then people would have no problem helping out. You could even give out special kudos or have a new "Proxy-Maintainer" status in the forums.

That is a very good suggestion. Let's try to get some people together to organize something like that._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

If Arch added support for installing old versions of packages and didn't become unbootable after kernel updates so frequently, I would seriously consider jumping ship. When it comes to keeping packages up-to-date, they are unmatchable.

I've never had an Arch install become unbootable._________________[ Kawa-kun, new and improved!! ]

The Gentoo Tinderbox has been available for quite some time. While not providing everything in every conceivable combination of USE-flags, you get profile defaults for a reasonable part of the stable tree.

Thanks for the tip... I'll try to remember it next time I think a binary distro may be more appropriate._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

If Arch added support for installing old versions of packages and didn't become unbootable after kernel updates so frequently, I would seriously consider jumping ship. When it comes to keeping packages up-to-date, they are unmatchable.

I've never had an Arch install become unbootable.

Different people have different experiences. I think mine was because I was using Catalyst. As you may know, they kicked it out of the main Arch repository. Catalyst versions don't always work with the latest kernel and X releases, which caused massive problems when they were updated._________________

I am aware of that, it is me who responded 2 emails after that. No-one replied to my emails and no-one took up my offer of help.

Actually, one of our recruiters did answer to that. And yes, your suggestions are very good. And I will certainly recommend those to be considered when we hammer out a revised recruitment process. Things often happen slowly in Gentoo. It is one of the downsides of being such a large distro. Don't be dismayed. Stay in touch with people who want to see the same things happening!

I'll still be here, have been for over 6 years.

yngwin wrote:

cokehabit wrote:

I know about proxy maintainer but in my experience I am one of the few outside the dev community who does.

Yes, that is unfortunate. PR is one of our weak areas. We should have much better and more easily accessible communication about the various ways people can contribute to Gentoo. I know there are a lot of users who would, if they knew how to, or if barriers were lowered. Let's see what we can do to make that happen now.

If there is one thing I know about it's Captain Picard. If there is 2 things I know about it is Captain Picard and PR. As I said, i am here if PR wants help. I have offered help loads of times. I was there with dsd and helped set up user-relations. I gave a ton of suggestions to christel, one which turned into sunrise.

yngwin wrote:

cokehabit wrote:

This thread was not started so people can argue about things,

I'm not trying to argue either, but to offer some rays of hope, and to take away some misconceptions, and also to see how we can work together to improve things.

Gentoo developers have seemed to shut themselves away from the community in recent years and there is the illusion that everything about Gentoo goes on behind closed doors. This illusion has now bred into "developers don't care". Developers need to have a more prominent part in the Gentoo user community otherwise you get the "we develop therefore it's our distro" mentality that seemed prevalent 2 years ago. A good example was when I was having trouble (for the 20th time) installing it was a developer - avenj - that helped me out on the forums. How many developers do you see chatting to their users like you are doing now?

yngwin wrote:

cokehabit wrote:

If you made a thread here in OTW and said "Here is a list of packages that need some loving, can you proxy maintain one?" Then people would have no problem helping out. You could even give out special kudos or have a new "Proxy-Maintainer" status in the forums.

That is a very good suggestion. Let's try to get some people together to organize something like that.

I would be happy but Gentoo doesn't even have a populated list of maintainer-needed packages online. The one that was pointed out to me had a few java packages and that was virtually it. There must be hundreds of packages out there that needs some lovin'. Naib suggested php for example._________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

If Arch added support for installing old versions of packages and didn't become unbootable after kernel updates so frequently, I would seriously consider jumping ship. When it comes to keeping packages up-to-date, they are unmatchable.

I've never had an Arch install become bootable.

fix'd _________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

I provided a specific example and was not attempting any "my repository is bigger than your repository." I apologize for not being more clear.

Okay, sorry that I misunderstood. The specific example you mentioned was one of those packages (and this seems for some reason to be more common with multimedia applications) where the upstream developers are working in opposite direction to our quality assurance standards. Most Gentoo devs will rarely be motivated enough to take on a package with such a maintenance burden. What you need in such cases is someone who actively uses the package and cares about it enough to do the work.

pjp wrote:

The ebuild has been available in bugzilla since 2005. Dev comments don't exactly promote a sense that what you say in this specific case would happen.

You should understand that a lot of us are passionate about open source and the way we prefer to do things ("best practices"). Packages that don't conform and upstream developers that do not want to cooperate with us, don't usually meet with a lot of sympathy. Sometimes that means we disappoint users who would like to see such packages in the portage tree, as in the case of Handbrake and Songbird.

pjp wrote:

'emerge sync' did not bring down a 'layman' tree as it does a portage tree. If that's been fixed, great work by those who implemented it.

eix-sync does, after

Code:

echo '*' > /etc/eix-sync.conf

pjp wrote:

Don't forget, constructive criticism isn't a personal attack.

I know. And if in my passionate reaction I give the impression I don't, then my apologies._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

in my admittedly limited knowledge of the bullshit politics and complete lack of any progress that has happened in the last several years

Your knowledge is limited indeed. There has been a lot of progress in the last years. Not as much as we would like to see, but "complete lack" doesn't come even close to a resemblance of reality.

speeddemon wrote:

People have complained and made posts over and over about how ridiculous it is to become a dev. And the devs always seem to respond with "we did it, we see no problems with the status quo. If you want to help you should suck it up and deal with it".

Some devs maybe. But there are a lot who would like to see the recruitment process streamlined. There have been discussions in the past, and minor improvements have been made. And we are now discussing it again, there is a real interest into improving this situation.

My knowledge of the politics is limited. My knowledge of gentoo is not. I don't consider overlays to be an improvement at all. In which case nothing has changed in gentoo. Portage plods along, new packages are added to the tree sooner or later, or they booted into an overlay. Oh wait, we have revdep-rebuild now. Woohoo.

You're condescending attitude, and the fact you come on here and tell us all that we're wrong is exactly the point. Either way, I don't really care anymore. I've moved on._________________Cats are deadly animals. If you stick your nose up their crotch and snort their piss, THEY CAN KILL YOU!!!

If you could spare a few minutes each day to help Gentoo, would you? Could you?

Yup, although I doubt that a few minutes a day would add up to much, but I would put some time into it

cokehabit wrote:

If a package that you use needed maintaining would you offer your services?

Provided that I knew enough about the package to help, yes.

cokehabit wrote:

Have you tried to become a developer before? Done the dev exam?

Nope, don't feel like I know quite enough yet, but am learning

cokehabit wrote:

Have you ever written an ebuild? Could you show others how to?

Again I haven't. I have however tried to see if I understand the syntax

I know that there are a number of issues, but again I would help where I can. Partly because I imagine some of the issues (Such as a small number of devs being around on the forums) can be attributed (at least partly) to the fact that a lot of devs are overworked, and partly because I like Gentoo and it would be a good for my studies (computer science) if I actually did some programming as well as work on the theoretical parts of the degree._________________Einstein was a great man, but he got one thing wrong with his theory of relativity. E= MC hammer. As far as logic goes, this is flawed, but as a show of wit, you can't touch this

'emerge sync' did not bring down a 'layman' tree as it does a portage tree. If that's been fixed, great work by those who implemented it.

eix-sync does, after

Code:

echo '*' > /etc/eix-sync.conf

then eix and emerge need to be combined into one glorious package_________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

We don't have a small community. Gentoo is actually one of the larger distros, with an active community. It certainly is bigger than Arch.

What are you basing this on? Do you have any metrics? And how do you explain the contradictory evidence in the form of the more active Arch forums, the faster updates to packages, the more complete wiki, and so on?

Looking at the actual numbers of people using the IRC channels and the forums again, I see that Arch has grown considerably in the last couple of years. When I tried Arch a couple of years ago, I could see on average roughly twice as many people on #gentoo than #archlinux and a similar difference in forums activity. Looking at it again now, I see that we are about even. I'm not sure package updates are comparable, as we have so many more packages (and yes, admittedly certain areas are lagging behind). As to documentation, I don't see much more of that in Arch either. But I must admit, they have grown considerably, while the Gentoo community seems to be remaining stable._________________"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln
Free Culture | Defective by Design | EFF

We don't have a small community. Gentoo is actually one of the larger distros, with an active community. It certainly is bigger than Arch.

What are you basing this on? Do you have any metrics? And how do you explain the contradictory evidence in the form of the more active Arch forums, the faster updates to packages, the more complete wiki, and so on?

Looking at the actual numbers of people using the IRC channels and the forums again, I see that Arch has grown considerably in the last couple of years. When I tried Arch a couple of years ago, I could see on average roughly twice as many people on #gentoo than #archlinux and a similar difference in forums activity. Looking at it again now, I see that we are about even. I'm not sure package updates are comparable, as we have so many more packages (and yes, admittedly certain areas are lagging behind). As to documentation, I don't see much more of that in Arch either. But I must admit, they have grown considerably, while the Gentoo community seems to be remaining stable.

don't worry, arch has no documentation_________________Since the bible and the church are obviously mistaken about where we came from, how can we trust them with where we're going?

We don't have a small community. Gentoo is actually one of the larger distros, with an active community. It certainly is bigger than Arch.

What are you basing this on? Do you have any metrics? And how do you explain the contradictory evidence in the form of the more active Arch forums, the faster updates to packages, the more complete wiki, and so on?

Looking at the actual numbers of people using the IRC channels and the forums again, I see that Arch has grown considerably in the last couple of years. When I tried Arch a couple of years ago, I could see on average roughly twice as many people on #gentoo than #archlinux and a similar difference in forums activity. Looking at it again now, I see that we are about even. I'm not sure package updates are comparable, as we have so many more packages (and yes, admittedly certain areas are lagging behind). As to documentation, I don't see much more of that in Arch either. But I must admit, they have grown considerably, while the Gentoo community seems to be remaining stable.

don't worry, arch has no documentation

its wiki however is great!_________________the table is made from wood. forget what you learnt, the table is made from carbon. forget what you learnt, the table is made from protons. forget what you learnt, the table is made from quarks. forget what you learnt, the table is good for shagging on

We don't have a small community. Gentoo is actually one of the larger distros, with an active community. It certainly is bigger than Arch.

What are you basing this on? Do you have any metrics? And how do you explain the contradictory evidence in the form of the more active Arch forums, the faster updates to packages, the more complete wiki, and so on?

Looking at the actual numbers of people using the IRC channels and the forums again, I see that Arch has grown considerably in the last couple of years. When I tried Arch a couple of years ago, I could see on average roughly twice as many people on #gentoo than #archlinux and a similar difference in forums activity. Looking at it again now, I see that we are about even. I'm not sure package updates are comparable, as we have so many more packages (and yes, admittedly certain areas are lagging behind). As to documentation, I don't see much more of that in Arch either. But I must admit, they have grown considerably, while the Gentoo community seems to be remaining stable.

don't worry, arch has no documentation

its wiki however is great!

It even looks nice, appealing to the eyes!_________________At the heart of the durability of mass schooling is a brilliantly designed power fragmentation system which distributes decision-making so widely among so many different warring interests that large-scale change is impossible to those without a codebook.